Microsoft is making a big strategic shift in their operating systems and applications. They have decided that they must target a broader set of platforms with a single integrated approach. To this end, they announced Windows 8 and Metro applications at the recent BUILD conference.

In this tutorial, we take our first look Win 8 and build a Metro application. We use Visual Basic as the code-behind to write an application that presents the contents of a blog site.

You’ll see how Visual Basic and XAML can be used to create a Metro application. You’ll also get a look at Win 8 and see how applications are presented using the “Metro” approach.

There are numerous new ideas, concepts, and even new vocabulary associated with the new Windows OS/Metro ecosystem. Links are provided with the tutorial to help explain some of these issues.